At the Athens airport, Dionysus was waiting for us - a bearded young man, a picture and example of the museum's Greek busts. Once his car broke down near Leskovac. He stayed for four years in the south of Serbia. He didn't say why, and we weren't rude enough to ask. Dionysos' mother, a Russian who married a Greek, asked him what he was going to do in Serbia. When his language skills landed him a job as a tour guide in Athens, she said it was a good thing he was there. For Dionis' agency, we were the first guests from Serbia since September.
Dionis tells us all this, interrupting the narration to show this or that, while driving us in a van about forty kilometers from the airport to the city. Soon the highway plunges into the suburbs, several floors, balconies with awnings, some churches between the buildings, a sea of concrete and bricks, here and there cypress spikes and crowns of palm trees, just enough to remind us that we are 1.100 kilometers south of Belgrade.
Unity Square
Dionis skilfully guided us through the traffic in the center - he said that luckily it's not so crowded on Sundays. North of the Acropolis, the heart of ancient Athens, is Platia Omonia - Unity Square. A fountain like the one at Slavija dates back to a recent renovation. The square is surrounded by old multi-story buildings. I thought only socialism produced this kind of charm. The hotel is a neoclassical building a few hundred meters from Omonia, in Constantine the Great Street. There we learn the first lesson of pedestrians in Athens. With the exception of some boulevards, there is only uphill and downhill in Athens.
The hotel is located right in front of the Church of St. Constantine. Our balcony on the third floor overlooks its facade. Dionis told us by the way that during the German occupation the hotel was the headquarters of the Gestapo.
I experienced it as a whim of fate - a descendant of German concentration camp prisoners living his classic Greek dreams in the former headquarters of the Gestapo. I remember Borislav Pekić and his novel How to appease a vampire. In it, the writer brings a former Gestapo officer to a hotel on the Adriatic that was the headquarters of Hitler's secret police during the war. I didn't want to let such vagaries of history spoil my stay in Athens. Yes, I looked a little suspiciously at the high-ceilinged rooms, peered from the third floor into the deep spiral staircase, at the bottom of which, in some basement half-darkness, the screams of tortured unfortunates still sleep. I didn't want to wake them up this time.
As it turned out in the morning before seven - the church has powerful bells:
Dong-dong-dong
Dong-dong-dong
Dong-dong-dong-dong
Dong-dong-dong
And so until you open your eyes. So chaste Athena wishes you good morning.
Omonia by night
So, we got up early, after breakfast we went out into the cool and bright morning, to take off our extra clothes during the day. At noon, we were enjoying over twenty Athens degrees in November with short sleeves.
In the small square between the hotel and the church, drug addicts stared dejectedly, each at their own nothingness. They talked quietly, helping each other to snort the drug. Believers entered the church next to them, being baptized.
In the evening, the streets are empty of citizens who had to go here for their business. But groups of younger men have spread through the streets. They were selling zale, speaking loudly in their native language, as if calling out to someone from their distant homeland. In addition to junkies, the surroundings of Omonia are full of migrants, people stranded in Athens, in search of their western dream.
And all those streets are named after key names in the history of philosophy or art - Socrates' rhetorical stunts, Anaxagoras' atoms. The Greek big three dramatists - Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides - are also drawn in the face of this region, which smells of gasoline and urine.
There are homeless people even in the most powerful boulevards with shop windows full of branded goods. But in the dead-end streets and bujaks, haustors and vaulted passages around Omonia, the night is their kingdom. The National Theater is almost opposite the hotel. It's Athens. Peaceful coexistence of bourgeoisie and anarchists, luxury and trash, tourists and junkies. In addition to gyros shops, shops such as Bismillah Halal offer fast food. And mopeds and motorcycles buzz around the streets day and night, I've only seen so many in Sicily.
Monastiraki
From Omonia, you go down to the old town towards the Acropolis along Atena, a street that is good for orientation because it bisects the space between Omonia and the Acropolis hill like an apple. The Town Hall and the main market of Athens are strung together in it. Pericles' monument must have stone nostrils, otherwise it would infect them, because of the morning smell of fish that fills the street to the brim. Such a selection of seafood is rarely seen, and you can eat cheaply under the arches of the market. At the bottom of the street is Monastiraki - one of the main squares in Athens, named after a former monastery that is no longer visible. But the most striking building on the square, shown in all tourist brochures, is the former mosque, which lacks a minaret. The Cistaraki Mosque, which is now a museum, was named after the 18th-century Ottoman governor of Athens who built it.
From Monastiraki, the main street for expensive shopping - Erma - leads to the left. It is named after Hermes, the god of trade and luck, sweet talk and some other things. It is also crowded on Sundays, and the street turns into a pedestrian zone only from the Byzantine church of Kapnikarei, from the year 1050, which appears before you like a mirage surrounded by glittering shop windows, restaurants and cafes.
Mitropoleos Street stretches south of that street, parallel to it, also towards Syntagma Square. It is in the first part, like the tangle of alleys around Monastiraki, full of small restaurants that offer classic Greek food in an endless series in crowded gardens. There are also shops that do not lag behind the oriental bazaar in terms of the variety of goods offered. A little further on, the street opens into the representative Mitropoleos square with the main church in the country - it is dedicated to the Mother of God, they call it Mitropolis for short. When the Greeks gained independence from the Ottomans, they could not agree on their own king, so they imported a Bavarian. Otto I also got his royal church in the heart of Athens.
Plate
Our journey to the Acropolis - in ancient Greek the name denoted any upper city - will take two days. On the first day, we got up with the firm intention of visiting the hill with some of the most famous temples of human civilization. It was visible day and night from almost every part of the city anyway, perched on a huge rock and beckoning us with its proud silence. But Athens is perhaps the most interesting in the area that leads to the Acropolis and is called Plaka.
According to etymologists, the word Plaka may be of Arvantian origin - Orthodox Albanians in Corinth spoke that dialect. According to this assumption, the word means "old Athens". And the Greek variant - plaka is a plate - is possible as a sign for the main foot of the Acropolis.
Once you will stop by the former library of Hadrian, guessing from the remains how magnificent the invisible part was. Then you will find yourself in one of the alleys that end with stairs. You will come across the "Tower of the Winds" and the Roman Agora. To the museum of Greek instruments and alleys that lead nowhere, but end with steep stairs framed by old two-story buildings.
And on the foothills, on the platforms, cafes and cafes - like in Lisbon. When it's a sunny day, and there were no shortage of such bars in Athens during our stay, then it's a sin to pass by those bars and not stop by for a drink. We decided on coffee Melina. It is named after Melina Mercouri, an actress and singer who opposed the Greek military junta, and in democratic Greece was also the Minister of Culture. It is said that the owner of the cafe was the head of the hall in the restaurant of the Greek parliament and that, when he became independent, he expressed his admiration for the artist and activist by naming his gastronomic child after her. Admittedly, Melina Merkuri also has her own monument in the city, but this way of remembering was closer to us.
When you find a good coffee on the tables that step down towards the old city center, then an ouzo with ice, and in the afternoon you lazily immerse your ears in jazzed-up Greek melodies, you realize that this is one of the Athenian faces you will fall in love with.
The Acropolis indeed
Pere or Pedro IV of Aragon left a note in September 1380: "The fortress of Athens is the most precious jewel in the world". Perhaps this Aragonese king and ruler of Attica was exaggerating a bit, but the Acropolis is certainly one of the places that Europeans should visit at least once in their lifetime.
On the second day, we are just as determined to get it. First, near Monastiraki, we found a nice terrace on the roof of a building in a narrow alley. Couleur Locale is one of the many Athenian bars with a garden on top of the building. But it is not touristy, so we easily found a place with a view of the Acropolis.
The Parthenon was bathed in the morning sun. It was one of those moments that make you travel. Everything was perfect, from the coffee that was born just a moment ago, to the stone beauty that is two and a half millennia old.
Then we climbed the streets of Plaka. We sat on a bench in the courtyard of the church. Mandarin trees and peace. Pop was sitting at the table at the other end of the yard, engrossed in a book. The courtyard had another exit to the upper alley. Nice shortcut. Then we went down again, going zig-zag for a while, through a town that showed the face of a Greek island town. Following an imaginary semicircular line at the foot of the Acropolis rock, we reached the area where tourists flock - to the Acropolis metro station.
We looked for a quieter side street and found refreshment in the garden of an Italian cafe. Observed over the edge of a cup of good cappuccino, the Parthenon seems to be just being born from the foam. But that's the wrong picture. Aphrodite was born from sea foam, far from here.
Ascent to the abode of the gods
We passed by the mighty Acropolis Museum. We will leave the visit to him for some rainy days. Now, at the foot of one of the most famous hills in the world, we walk along a beautifully landscaped street that gently climbs towards the ticket office. And we're already inside. An elderly lady asks at the ticket office if the ascent is too strenuous. No, ten minutes later, we heard comforting words. The first elevation for sighing with beauty and taking photos is above the amphitheater of the theater of Herod Atticus from 161 BC. Behind the theater are cypress trees and the city as a backdrop. Concerts are held in this place. It's nice to know that these stones are alive.
The next thing that will cause astonishment is the porch of the Acropolis - Propylaea. Between the Doric columns you enter a plateau full of stones. To the left is the Erechtheion, a temple famous for the caryatids, the stone maidens that support the roof. Should I say or keep quiet? I will say it though. These stone maidens are not those sculpted by ancient Greek hands. These are replicas. One of the original caryatids, according to the gentlemanly customs of the time, was stolen by an English lord back in 1811. The others were replaced by copies and are kept in the Acropolis Museum, so that they are not exposed to atmospheric vagaries and the famous Athenian smog. Erechtheion is, therefore, as far as caryatids are concerned - now "older and more beautiful".
To the right, the mighty Parthenon sprawled. It is dedicated to Athena Parthenos - the virgin Athena. This goddess vowed before her father Zeus that she would never have a lover. Hence the virginal attribute. The Parthenon is not worth describing in particular - countless words have already been spent on it. It's worth seeing.
Athenian Courtyard
Viewed from the Acropolis, Athens is miraculous in itself. It seems to a person that he is in the center of an endless city. And that it stands on a very tangible foundation of its own humanistic education.
On the way back, you should stop between the Doric columns and look to the south. That look is not forgotten. You should not go back the same way, but turn left at the Theater of Herod Atticus and stop next to the ruins of the Theater of Dionysus. This is where the birth of Greek drama took place, from here it traveled through the millennia to conquer the world.
Let me also say that late in the afternoon, starving, we walked around Psiri, just below Omonia, Tavern to tavern. Above one unsightly door is written Avli - I recognize the word Ottoman heritage, avlija. We're going in. There is no internet. The boss stubbornly refuses to leave the analog era. Courtyard with tables. The murmur of conversation. Good food, excellent local wine. And a slight tiredness mixed with happiness that we are right here.
I haven't told half the story of Athena, but I'll save maybe the best for next time. Everyone comes to Athens with their own image of her. And few will associate the city where he was born with typical expectations. Athens is independent. She has a thousand faces.
Bonus video:
